Whether you’re running a business, keeping your loved ones updated or simply staying part of the cultural conversations, social media has become a necessary evil for most of us. And as time goes on, it can be harder than ever to both have a healthy relationship with social media as well as offer a fresh perspective of your personal brand. As each year passes, the approach to sharing our lives and the things we do changes completely. From reels to IG lives, the way we connect can say a lot about who we are and what kind of community we want to create online. When we are refreshing our lives, we can feel inspired to also change the way we show up on social media, for good reason. If you’re in need of an online refresh, here are a few things to consider doing to make it all pop.
Delete any content more than 5 years old.
Social media is an ever-changing landscape and chances are who you were 5 years ago is not who you are today. With archiving features, you can access your old content at any time without completely deleting; making it even easier to reset without losing any good memories.
Have an honest friend delete the content that doesn’t catch their eye…
…and then have another friend do the same thing. This will help you get rid of things that maybe you feel connected to but that doesn’t serve the purpose you truly want. It’s helpful to have an outside eye for this, editing can be hard for most of us.
Decide on an amount of content and remove until you achieve it.
How much content is too much for you? Maybe you’d like to stay under 1k posts or 500? Maybe you want to only share words and images? Want a new color story to express the mood of your page? Whatever the rules are for your social media profile, define them and then adhere accordingly.
Write a mission statement.
Being clear on what you intend to use social media for can be a great guiding post for which content needs to stay and what can go. If the goal is to use your platform to sell, that can help you remove anything that doesn’t effectively do that. If the goal is to simply share your life, decide which posts best convey the story of your life and work from there. It’s all about intention.
If you don’t look that way anymore, get rid of it.
Listen, we all go through changes and it’s 100% ok to keep photos to look at for motivation but it’s counterproductive to keep images of yourself public that no longer look like you. Not only is it confusing for others, it doesn’t support where you’re headed if it’s not a realistic depiction of who you are.
Any content that didn’t age well.
For many of us, social media came at the height of us not knowing exactly how permanent the internet would be. Now, we are all much more aware of harmful and insensitive images and words in a way that we may not have been years ago. Try a keyword search with your @name attached to mark any photos, tweets or statuses that need to be deleted before the past comes back to haunt you.